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Comment by Ensorceled | Hacker News Reader

<spoiler>For #1, I didn't hear correctly because I didn't understand that the clearly insane and cruel warden would let the prisoners label the boxes before hand :-/

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You don't actually need to label them you just need all the prisoners to be able to memorize which name is associated with which box, Alice's box is the first on the left, Bob's the second etc... Then when Zach. Z. Z. Vanderwall opens "his box" and finds the name Bob he follows procedure.

You need a minimal perfect hash function but it's a thing that can be done, especially because prisoners in these sort of conundrums always have fantastic memories and mental math facility.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_hash_function#Minimal_...

Still, I didn't hear correctly either: I thought there would be 100 identical boxes lined up in a row by the warden's assistant.

The solution still works. The prisoners have agreed on a mapping between their names and the order of the 100 boxes. That mapping is what they rely on to inspect the boxes, the boxes don't need actual labels.

The problem statement makes it clear they can communicate prior to starting the game.

And they all do what you, The Nerd, say. Prisoners are known to be well-behaved and respect Nerds! /s

From my experience as a nerd playing werewolf with non-nerds I'm afraid you're right.

Me: "Here's a plan that will defeat the werewolf in any case, even if I am the werewolf"

Them: "That sounds complicated, therefore suspicious, let's hang him"

>fantastic memories and mental math facility.

If you assume the axiom of choice and allow them to memorize arbitrary uncountable elements, you can get more interesting puzzles (and also go insane).

https://cornellmath.wordpress.com/2007/09/13/the-axiom-of-ch...

Doh! Of course. But now the recommended solution is really overkill ...

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